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States, Societies, Cultures, East and West:
Essays in Honor of Jaroslaw Pelenski

Edited by Janusz Duzinkiewicz, Editor-in-Chief
Myroslav Popovych
Vladyslav Verstiuk
Natalia Yakovenko

     This volume honors Jaroslaw Pelenski for a lifetime of scholarship. It brings together 60 studies from the United States, Ukraine, Poland, Canada, Germany, Italy, Russia and France that reflect the diverse interests of Pelenski, his colleagues, students and associates, and yet is bound by a common attention to the cohesion of societies and states and the positions of individuals within larger structures. The focus is on East Central and Eastern Europe, but the geographic scope extends to the United States and Asia, as well as to the rest of the world. Most of the articles are historical, while some are theoretical.
     The articles in the volume are arranged by author and most appear in the original language of each contributor (English, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, etc.). Special attention has been paid to one topic in particular—the state school in Ukrainian historiography, which Pelenski brought to light in Ukrainian and international scholarship, and which is closely related to his contributions to the study of the contest for the legacy of Kievan Rus’. Another topic that receives thorough investigation is the impact of the Islamic Mongol-Turkic world on Eastern Europe reflecting Pelenski’s long-time scholarly preoccupation with the origins of the struggle between Russian Orthodox Christianity and Islam. The participation of institutions and individuals as widespread as the subject matter makes this book a true product of international cooperation.

Jaroslaw Pelenski
      Jaroslaw Pelenski was born in Warsaw in 1929 of Ukrainian ancestry. He spent the next 15 years growing up in Warsaw and Lublin. His family left Poland in the summer of 1944, one week before the Warsaw Uprising (during which the Nazis methodically destroyed Warsaw). After the war he attended Oberrealschule in Würzburg, followed by two semesters at Würzburg University. He earned his first doctorate at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich in 1957.
      During his university studies in Germany Pelenski worked for the American occupation forces and courts, and finally moved to the U.S. in 1957. From 1958 to 1961 he taught German literature and language at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. In 1968 he earned his second PhD at Columbia University. From 1964 to 1967 he was an assistant professor of history at American University in Washington, D.C.
      In 1967 Pelenski accepted a teaching position in the History Department of the University of Iowa, where he remained in his capacity as Professor of History until his retirement in 1998.
     Since 1987 Pelenski has been president of the W. K. Lypynsky East European Research Institute, Inc., in Philadelphia. Since 1993 he has also been Director of the European (previously East European) Research Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, where he was elected as a foreign academician in 1992.

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